


walking between the lines

by waterlit



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Experimental Style, Missions are dangerous, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Tragedy, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2018-12-23 00:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11978568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlit/pseuds/waterlit
Summary: He'll never be the same again, not after returning from Road's world.





	walking between the lines

Through the chill and fog he moves, stumbling, slipping, weeping, fingers bleeping.

Lavi climbs through the night, up rocky terrain, struggling to maintain a foothold. Pebbles roll away under his feet into the great chasm below, the hell where demons abide, where the monster waits. It's hard to gain purchase on this rock, hard to keep the stars in sight. Hard to leave, hard to move, hard to fight the urge to just let go and give up the fight.

His mind is a misty and meandering path, but some deep-seated animal instinct shouts aloud, _move, move_! For somewhere in his memories he remembers needle-pricks against his skin, girlish laughter, and an ethereal tune, a song of seeking, a requiem speaking of the Heart.

The moon glares down, golden-bright, a knife-sharp smile in the great dark night. And Lavi moves on, on, onwards, heedless of bruised knees and the welts trailing mauve around his wrists. He must escape— _must_ —he must return home—somewhere— _must_.

But the edges of his core cannot hold, and one by one memories fall apart, dripping down like burning wax onto the canvas below.

There are only red eyes (blazing eyes) below him; only twisted sneers and gaping chasms where teeth should have been; only the empty gates of ruined metal wrought into the shapes of human skeletons waiting beneath his feet. The rope trembles, and he whispers old incantations to himself, full of the power of comfort and silence.

Down below, Rhode smiles, and licks her finger, the blood there glistening slightly. It will be a good dawn.

* * *

 

There is wine by the chair, a fire in the sombre hearth and dishes on the floor, and Lavi passes them on. Miranda strokes the flame with smoky fingers, nails turning a ghastly black, and sheds her tears onto the carpet.

In between sobs, she asks, "When will you stop this? Will you get better?"

Lavi lopes around the room yet again. "Miranda. You're Miranda."

Miranda goes to Lavi and claps his broken fingers in her own thin ones. She strokes Lavi's hands gently, with worry sitting on her brow. "Why are you doing this?"

"She took me to her elfin grot." He grimaces, a haunted look in his eye. "I didn't mean to go. And yet I did."

"Why, why?" Her tears are raining down, now. "Did you not want me?"

"You..." And his voice echoes through the room, a tiny rumble in the cavernous space. "Who are you?"

Miranda looks up, her red-rimmed eyes bitterly watering, and is shocked to see that familiar stare.  _  
_

"You're back..."

"Back where?" The stare is gone. Gone, gone, gone like the fragile wind on a cold winter's evening. Lavi disappears again, leaving behind only an empty shell of his former self.

"Here. Home." She presses her hand to his heart.

He falls asleep then. Exhausted, Miranda collapses into a sorry heap on the floor, her throat swollen with frustration and her chest racked with too-loud sobs. The light is failing, and the moon is waxing, and all she can do is weep on the ground while Allen and Lenalee and Kanda and all the others risk their lives to save the world from rushing on to its portended doom.

* * *

 

The next night brings no better news. Lavi turns and tosses upon the divan, eyes open but clouded over with fear and distrust and a hopelessness Miranda cannot place.

So, she clutches at his hand. "Please snap out of this. We cannot go on like this. I cannot—I cannot. Lavi."

He blinks, and returns to staring at the wall. His lips are pressed tight, and his knees are locked. "What is that noise?"

"There's no noise."

"There is. It's getting louder."

Miranda says, "It's just the wind. The wind's coming in under the door."

Indeed, the wind rattles the window bars.

But Lavi says, "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"

"It's just being the wind—Lavi. The wind. The wind is not doing anything."

Lavi slides onto the ground. "No—no. She's here. I know she's coming for me."

It's a conversation they've had for many moons now. Too taxing to reply all the time, but Miranda lifts her head and smiles at him. "It's just the wind, Lavi. I promise."

"You know me." 

"Yes, dear." She almost breaks down again—what can she do, really? Shake him, and say _we were lovers, you fool_?

She can't do that to him. She's Miranda, and always wrong. It must have been her fault somehow she hadn't protected him well enough. There might have been a slip, and Time Record might have left him alone for the demons to get to him and ransack his memories. It was all her fault.

All her fault, all her fault, and now she sinks into another drought.

* * *

 

"I saw their starved lips in the gloam," he tells her conversationally the next day. "They'd bitten their lips till the blood ran."

"They did!" She strokes his soft hair and feels his body tremble against hers, like a child hearing a ghost story for the first time.

"Yes. It was the fairy who did it."

"The fairy."

"She had short hair. Blue, I think. I saw her before, in another dream before memory."

"Blue hair," Miranda said. "That sounds familiar."

"They cried out to me," Lavi continued, ignoring her, "saying many things. Bad things. You don't want to hear them, do you?"

"Many things..." Miranda echoed.

"Many things," Lavi agreed. Then he turns his back on her and goes to sleep.

* * *

 

_I will take to the roads._

Lavi pulls at the rope, struggling uphill and against his bonds. It is a long and painful road, and his tracks are inching deep into the dry mud. His back is bent and his eye is dull and his nose is wet. As ever Miranda hurries behind, hands clasped and eyes bright. She has sworn to herself never to leave him even if he never recovers.

"I will not leave you."

And so she doesn't, choosing to follow in his wake, and hopes for a miracle.

 _It won't be long now_ , she thinks, and lapses into prayer. _Please._

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on FFN in Sept 2010. Quite heavily re-written. 
> 
> Some dialogue/description have been quoted from Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Eliot's The Waste Land. This was to a great extent inspired by the Inuyasha fic titled A Game of Chess by Resmiranda over on FFN.


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